


Withouten Wind, Withouten Tide

by Muccamukk



Category: Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Haunting, Piano, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-23 01:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12495856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: A pianoforte is a generous wedding gift, even if neither Catherine nor Henry knows how to play, but as Catherine spends more time at the keys and a mysterious song begins to fill her dreams, she comes to wish that General Tilney had been more restrained.





	Withouten Wind, Withouten Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Major](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/gifts).



> Title from the 1798 edition of "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" by Samuel Coleridge, which is also referenced in the story. This was written while listening to [the second movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C minor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpeZHWrx5Q) roughly fifteen thousand times.
> 
> Thank you to Prinzenhasserin for beta reading.

"It is a generous notion on the part of your father," Catherine said.

"Indeed it is," Henry agreed, although his tone that implied that was why he found the whole business suspect.

They lapsed into silence, studying General Tilney's wedding gift. The pianoforte wasn't new, but it was still beautiful, and must have come very dear. An overlay of black laurels climbed the mahogany legs and wound along the front piece until they wreathed the silver plate proclaiming the makers' names. These were ducked discretely between the dampers under the keyboard cover, which had been raised to show the instrument's best aspect.

"It's only," Catherine continued hesitatingly, eyes fixed on the gleaming ivory keys, admiring how they glowed in the thin sunshine of the November morning as it came in through the drawing room windows. "It's only, I do hope he doesn't expect me to play for him when next he visits. Music is not one of my accomplishments, although I listen well."

Instead of replying, Henry crossed to the instrument and picked out a few notes of a song popular at country dances. "To my poor ear, it seems to be in tune," he said, "and Eleanor will enjoy it when she visits."

Catherine did not say that having her sitting room—so long in scheming, and every detail imparted in letter to Henry before her arrival, and all the dearer for that—disarranged for the sake of an instrument neither of them would use, had done little to put her new father-in-law back into her favour. "It does nearly match the little writing desk," she concluded, though said desk was a full two-shades lighter, and mahogany and cherry wood were not the same thing at all.

Rather than labour the point, Henry pulled her upstairs to, he said, discuss the furnishings in the bedchamber. Catherine went with him amicably.

* * *

One of the village boys brought a message after dinner that same night. Henry read it, sighed, and told the boy to run back with the message that Henry would be there presently. To Catherine, he said, "Old Mr Croft has taken ill, and feels a pressing need to understand the nature of repentance and the glories that may lay beyond the mortal veil, yet again."

"Oh dear," Catherine said. Indeed, her father had been on many such calls, and they often lasted into the small hours. "Oughtn't we send Robbie for a physician, or one of the village women?"

"I expect that my presence will inspire a recovery," Henry answered. "It usually does."

"Oh dear," Catherine said again, though more on Henry's behalf than Mr. Croft's this time. She helped Henry into his jacket and coat, and called Robbie, the man of all work, to carry a lantern for him. It was not yet half six, but the night had fallen like an felted black wool, and a west wind rattled through the bare beaches. She wrapped an extra scarf around Henry's neck and tucked the ends into his coat before kissing his cheek. "Do take care."

"For your sake, I shall," Henry declaimed, with perhaps more dramatics than the moment required, then he was gone.

Catherine stood next to the door for a moment, hand still raised in farewell, then straightened and went back into the dining room. Jane, the maid, was already clearing the table, and Catherine slipped away before the girl could ask if Mrs Tilney needed anything. In the drawing room, she lit a candelabrum, lifted the keyboard cover and picked out the first few notes of a childish piece Sarah had once failed to teach her. The music sounded discordant against the silence of the house, for all that the instrument was tuned, and Catherine shivered and closed the lid.

"Silly goose," she said to herself. This made her second night in the house in Woodston, and her first without Henry. "I shall read a novel," she decided. There was a book that Sarah had given her as a wedding gift, but when she picked it up, it was revealed to be poetry, chiefly a long poem about a sailor stranded in the antipodes. Catherine set the book aside and retired to her room with a notable lack of satisfaction. There was mending to be done, but that would be better served by daylight, and besides, she had no appetite for it. She could write Eleanor or Sarah or her mother, but she'd only just done so this afternoon. After some minutes of wandering the house, she returned to the pianoforte and opened its cover again. She tried to remember the bright piece Henry had played that morning, but truly, she had no head for music. She ran her finger down the length of the keys, striking first all the whites, high to low, and then the blacks, low to high.

It would be a fine thing to play well, she thought, and imagined spinning off delicate melodies by Haydn or Scarlatti for a rapturous audience consisting of Henry, Eleanor, Sarah, and perhaps a lady of some minor yet distinguished nobility who happened to get caught in an early winter storm and needed to put up at the parsonage until her carriage could be repaired.

Only that made her think of Henry, making his way through what was surely almost a gale, and Catherine's attention was drawn to the rattle of the beaches, and the way the wind whistled through the gables. She could also hear a faint clatter of dishes from the scullery, but did not shake her mood.

She went back to the poem. The protagonist tied a murdered sea bird about his neck. Catherine set the book down and decided that, early as it was, she might as well retire for the night.

Yet was not her wifely duty to wait up for Henry? The idea of setting out some hot cider and cold meats for a late supper on his return appealed to her. She could not remember her mother ever having done such, but she had not seen her parents when newly wed, so perhaps they had. Henry would tease her, but that could not be helped. Henry would tease her no matter what she did, and at least now he was permitted to kiss her after he did so.

She sat at the little stool that accompanied the pianoforte, and tried to remember what Sarah showed her of chords and melodies. It all came out a bit ragged, but if she practised, and maybe found someone to show her a bit, she ought to be able to play _something_ by Christmas, oughtn’t she? Perhaps there was someone in the village who knew more, or could give lessons.

By eight o'clock, she decided that she'd hit every key thrice over and badly at that, and that really, Henry could be all night and she could ask Cook to keep something warm for his return, and gave up and went to bed.

As she faded into sleep, she heard music from below: the pianoforte played clearly and fluently: a slow, soft piece she did not know. Henry must be home, she thought, what a goose for saying he couldn't play, but she was too sleepy to get up and greet him.

* * *

She did not, in fact, see Henry until breakfast the next morning. Even though Mr. Croft had not perished in the night, other business had kept Henry occupied in his study, and Catherine had remembered a promise to Mrs. Allen in regards to same's urgent desire to be informed of the final furnishing of the drawing room.

When they at last met over hot chocolate and toast, Catherine mentioned, as casually as she could manage, that she should like to learn to play their new pianoforte. "I had thought there could be a master or even a retired governess nearby who we might hire, but now that I've heard how well you play, we may as well save the expense." Her mother had given her an accounting book of rather larger dimensions with this departure, and admonished Catherine to do better with this one than the one that had accompanied her first trip to Bath almost a twelve month before.

Henry laughed. "I should make a poor teacher, my dear," he said lightly, "more a hobble then a guide, I'd think. However, if you want me as partner in a kind of three-legged race towards proficiency, I believe I promised to love you, comfort you, honour and keep you in sickness and in health, and forsaking all other as recently as last Thursday."

"Henry!" Catherine tried to look serious and failed completely. "False modesty doesn't suit, especially not when I've heard you playing. Why not teach me that piece, at least?"

"What? 'Ribbons in Her Hair'? For Christmas? Now, that will surprise Father."

Catherine blushed at the thought, but said, "Not the dance, that rondo you played last night, when you came in." She hummed the melody strand she could remember, but faltered when Henry frowned.

"Sounds like that new bit of Beethoven Eleanor's in love with," Henry said. "She was humming it at me before the wedding, heard it on her honeymoon, she said, but I've no notion of that sort of thing."

"But.." Catherine began to protest, but then closed her mouth and took a sip of chocolate before she ventured, "Well then, have you heard of anyone in town who might offer pianoforte lessons? Perhaps simple ones?"

Henry was still staring down at his toast, as though it had Eleanor's musical notation on it, and likely contemplating composers with difficult German names. When Catherine said his name again, he started slightly and said, "I seem to remember a young man who..." he shook his head. "I'll ask Mr. Lambert, he knows this sort of thing."

"Thank you. I'm sure he does," Catherine said. If there was any bit of gossip in the county that the church warden did not know, it would come as a surprise to everyone.

She must have dreamed the music, she decided. One of those strange, seemingly conscious dreams that came of sleeping in new places.

* * *

No messenger from ailing parishioners arrived with the pudding that night, and Henry and Catherine were able to retire together to the drawing room, where Henry idly worked at next morning's service, and Catherine poked at her book for a bit—a phantom ship appeared in a becalmed sea, piloted by a skeleton and death, or possibly life, in a woman's form, and all but one of the sailors dropped dead at the sight of them—"I look'd to Heaven, and try'd to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came and made My heart as dry as dust"—before setting it on the edge of the pianoforte, and raising the cover to rest her fingers lightly on the keys.

"What shall you play?" Henry asked, laughter lifting his voice.

Catherine shook her head and did not reply. She was trying to remember the music from her dream. She tentatively formed A major with her right hand, which sounded right, but she didn't know what to do next. She had the oddest feeling that if she were to close her eyes and just wait, the notes would come to her, but when she tried it, all she could think to do was the A major chord with left and right hand at once, which was satisfyingly loud and sonorous, and made Henry start, but did not remind her of what was to come next. Instead, she picked out a bit of "Royal Oak," which it seemed, had come back to her since the night before. She sighed and closed the lid, saying aloud that she really ought to get lessons.

To which Henry agreed that there were only so many times of an evening that one could peaceably listen to "Royal Oak," then, smiling, bid her come to bed.

* * *

The next day was a Sunday, and All Saints' Day on the church calendar. Catherine sat in the front pew listened to Henry read from the Book of Revelation, and imagined the previous Mrs. Tilney and her own dear gran robed in white, standing before the throne and surrounded by angels. It seemed very peaceful, and far away from ghost ships and wax corpses, and all the other horrors found in novels and her imagination.

Later, she walked home with the household, the wind rattling the last of the oak leaves from the branches and swirling them high above the road, and the clouds near low enough to touch, but no snow, yet, despite the cold. Jane was humming the closing hymn, and Robbie picked it up, a little off-key. Catherine didn't feel quite right singing, but the music made her feel light for all that, and she came into the house with a glad heart.

When she came into the drawing room, the keyboard cover of the pianoforte was open. Catherine frowned, sure she'd closed it before she'd gone to bed, and not touched it since. Yet perhaps Jane had been dusting before church, or had been curious about the instrument. She was a village girl new to service, and might not have seen one before. Catherine crossed to the instrument, and realised that the book of poetry that she'd set on the edge had fallen to the floor.

Catherine was just working over how to rebuke Jane for her carelessness, when the girl brought her tea and a luncheon of bread and cheese. She was still half singing the hymn, and looked so happy that Catherine couldn't find it in her heart to scold her over a dropped book. "Do you like the pianoforte?" she asked instead.

"I couldn't say, ma'am," Jane answered.

"You don't play?" Catherine pressed, it having occurred to her that if it hadn't been Henry, then perhaps someone else in the household had played two night before.

"Oh no, ma'am!" Having set out the tray and poured Catherine's tea, she hovered a few steps back.

"Well, never mind," Catherine said and dismissed her. She watched as Jane fled in a swish of skirts.

Before she started on the luncheon, she turned back to the pianoforte, again resting her hands on the keys. Only this time, the first bars came to her, left hand and right playing together. She repeated them a few times, then picked up her tea.

When she left, she closed the keyboard cover and laid a crisp russet oak leaf atop it.

* * *

That night, the wind kept her awake, howling through the eves and driving rain against the shutters like a snare drum. Henry, long since used to the house and the peculiarities of Gloucestershire's weather, slept solidly beside her, but Catherine lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling, drifting between sleep and wakefulness, and starting as each new gust shook the house. She hummed a lullaby to herself, not Jane's hymn but the music she'd heard before, the rondo with its soft progressions and returns. She liked the way sometimes the keys played fluently and sometimes stuttered over bars as though the next one had been forgotten. It climbed and twined like a wisteria on a trellis, so complicated that Catherine was surprised that she remembered so much of it. When she reached what she thought might be the end, she started anew, and this time, as she floated on the border of sleep, she thought she heard the pianoforte joining her voice.

* * *

"Did Mr. Lambert know of a tutor?" Catherine asked over chocolate the next morning.

Henry shook his head, that endearing line forming between his brows. "No," he replied, drawing out the word as if it troubled him. "He said there wasn't one any more, and changed the subject with some celerity."

"How strange," Catherine said, immediately intrigued. "Did he say who this master had been, or where he'd gone, or why?"

"You now know as much as I, my love," Henry replied. He shook his head slightly. "Whatever the nature of his evacuation from the village, the result is the same. There seems no one within convenient distance that will offer lessons, at least not until Eleanor should visit."

"Ah well," Catherine said, and she surprised herself by having to feign disappointment. The truth was that she'd begun to think of the pianoforte as hers and hers alone, and the idea of someone else touching it, caressing its keys, lifting its lid to adjust its strings, made her uneasy. She'd made sure to check it, on the way to breakfast, but much to her relief, the oak leaf had still been there just as she'd left it.

"I suppose you shall have to soldier on, alone in pursuit of genius," Henry said, eyes twinkling.

"I suppose I shall," Catherine answered primly, but silently she was pleased.

* * *

That afternoon, when Henry was out again, Catherine set the fading leaf aside and lifted the lid, thinking with a little thrill of anticipation how it had felt to play those first few notes correctly. She remembered them, and this time she would comprehend more, she knew she would.

To her dismay, the lifted cover revealed that two of the keys had depressed of their own accord. Catherine frowned. She knew even less of tuning pianofortes than she did of playing them, but she had in her mind that there was a kind of lever and perhaps a spring inside that made the hammers strike the strings. Perhaps it had come askew.

Yet when she lifted the lid, she could find no visible problems in the workings—though a splash of something dark, wine perhaps, stained the soundboard. The depressed keys were clear, but only in the same way as though she herself were holding them down. She sat down in perplexity, staring at the keyboard. Then, carefully, she put her fingers over the keys, and pressed lightly. When she lifted her hands, they came up again, having unstuck. She played them again, and they made the first notes of her song.

Catherine smiled. "So you want me to play you," she said. "Very well."

When she'd played the first notes, the next came to her, and then the next. She was not as fluent as the music in her head, but she was playing. Playing as she never had before, she realised, and that thought startled her, making her hit a wrong note and jarring the whole song out of order. The music left her.

"Drat," Catherine murmured, and tried to start over again, but now she couldn't move past the first few notes, and only those by remembering which keys had been stuck. And now that she thought of it, how odd that had been! Surely the pianoforte was not in fact trying to teach her to play?

Unless it was. Catherine thought of the poem she'd been reading, and how the sailor had escaped the antipodes when the ship had sailed of its own accord, or perhaps God or the Moon had driven it. Yet that was a fancy. She was trying to be less fanciful now that she was a married woman.

Sighing, Catherine closed the keyboard cover and went to look to her household. Still, she returned the leaf to its place.

"Don't dust the pianoforte," she said to Jane, later.

"But..." Jane started, then corrected herself. "Yes, ma'am."

Catherine smiled.

* * *

Catherine was having trouble sleeping. She lay next to Henry and stared up into the dark. Her head was full of music, the repeats and returns of the rondo, the way the contrasting episodes music rose and rose, insisting on their point, but the theme always came back, calm, steady, and sure.

Henry stirred in his sleep when she rose, but only to roll over into the warm place she'd left.

She found the drawing room by feel, then lit a candle from the banked embers. The pianoforte gleamed, the candlelight whispering over its inlay and making the mahogany glow from within. The ivory of the keyboard was the brightest thing in the room, drawing her in. Catherine set the chamberstick down and settled at the keys. Her hands moved as if they had their own will. She could feel the keys under her fingers, and hear the notes, just as they'd always been in her own head, but she wasn't conscious of knowing one note from another.

As the first contrasting episode came in, she hummed along to it. Her playing became more ostentatious as she felt the music moving in her. She knew she was showing off, but that was alright if there was no one else here, was it not? She'd abandoned her fantasy of playing for the admiration of her family and friends. She didn't give a feather if they knew she could play or not.

She finished the last, light, teasing notes of the movement and wished that she knew the next. These things usually came in threes, did they not?

Catherine laughed at herself. She hardly knew the form, let alone the name of the piece she was playing so perfectly. That was alright. It seemed that the pianoforte knew, just as it knew she would come and had opened for her.

Yet that had been strange, had it not? She hadn't lifted the keyboard cover; it had been open when she'd come in. She remembered the gleam of ivory even on this moonless night, and she had certainly not left it so when she'd retired, nor the lid lifted. Now that she'd finished playing the oddness of what she'd done, of what was happening, struck her.

Her beloved drawing room felt very close then, and she closed the keyboard cover sharply, taking only a little more care over the lid prop, so that the lid thumped down, startling her out of her fugue.

She needed air, Catherine decided, and took the candle through to the front door, and only paused to unlatch it before she stepped outside, gasping.

Sunday's wind had died, leaving a chill silence in its wake. The tallow candle was the only light in view, and it felt insignificant and uncertain. Mist was raising from the lawn to steal across the path, and her breath frosted the air. She shivered—a response to the stillness more than the cold—and had to steady the candle with both hands before shook out.

Catherine backed inside and closed the door, but the clarity the autumnal night had brought remained: What happened before the pianoforte was unnatural. There were no white-robed saints with palm fronds here, but something else, something like the poem's dread ship with Death at the helm, and it had been drawing her in.

But what could she do? It seemed so natural a thing, to want to play well, and it was a beautiful instrument, a family gift, at which her daughter might someday play. Catherine could hardly give it away, and what would Henry think if she did? He'd had enough fun at the expense of her fancies already.

Catherine returned to the drawing room and stared at the pianoforte. It stood silent and beautiful, still closed. It really did look best in candlelight. She passed her hand between it and the candle, watching the play of shadows on gleaming wood until she noticed that the candle was burning low and about to spill over the wax pan of the chamberstick.

How long had she been up? Could it be that this all really was some fancy brought on by fatigue and nerves and a new house? Left in similar circumstances, she had decided that General Tilney had murdered his wife, after all. Perhaps she was imagining that her pianoforte was possessed on the same thin grounds.

Catherine was very tired, and it surely was nearly dawn. Going back to bed was the most prudent idea, and she would think it over in the light of day.

She snuffed the candle and made her way back upstairs to the bedchamber. Henry murmured a complaint at the coldness of her feet, then curled around her to warm her. Catherine snuggled back against him, closed her eyes and tried to still her mind, yet all she could hear was that music, and behind it, a voice humming accompaniment. She did not sleep.

* * *

"You look tired, my dear," Henry said over chocolate. Rather, he was drinking chocolate. Catherine had asked Cook to make her a coffee, which was dreadful enough to be reviving.

"I couldn't sleep," Catherine said. She'd taken another long look at the pianoforte in the light of day, grey and strained as that light might be with the fog set in, and had come to no conclusion. The whole night's adventure might have been a dream, save for her fatigue and the candle stub. Though she could still hear the music, it seemed detached, ethereal, like something heard clearly, but a long way off. She couldn't imagine that she had played something like that. It wasn't just an old hymn or a child's exercise, but a proper recital piece, like Eleanor said she'd heard in Vienna. She hesitated before saying more, then admitted, "I got up for a bit, tried at the pianoforte. I hope I didn't wake you."

"My sleep remained untroubled by 'Royal Oak,' or 'Greensleeves,' or whatever else you may have essayed," Henry said.

"I'm glad," Catherine answered, though that in itself perplexed her. It was not so large a house. "I forgot to ask if you found out more about the mystery of the missing music master."

"I did," Henry admitted, but prevaricated by commenting on first the breakfast and then the fog before Catherine convinced him to explain himself. Henry pulled a face. "I asked Father, who knew the whole story, of course." He then explained that some years ago there had been a young man hired by Baronet Roche for his eldest daughter, and that this gentleman had also given lessons in the surrounding villages, which is what Henry had initially remembered.

"And he departed when the young lady debuted?" Catherine prompted when again, he hesitated.

"No," Henry said. "The baron dismissed him, abruptly and without his pay. My father said that he made some fuss of it in town, but was not heard of after that."

Catherine spent a pleasant moment considering the possibilities of this mystery—forbidden romance and hidden bodies both favoured theories—before her thoughts returned to the previous night and she sighed gloomily. She felt she ought to take a nap, but had too much work. She looked to Henry to see him watching her carefully.

"Is something troubling you?" he asked, and, when she shook her head, he continued delicately, "I have heard that new wives, especially ones who move so far from their kith and kin, sometimes..."

Catherine was still shaking her head, and now held up a hand to halt him. "Henry, do not think that I am homesick," she protested, though she hadn't thought of that. "I..." she hovered over a lie, thinking of that horrible night when he had found her snooping in his mother's chambers. "I think I have taken a fancy from that book Sarah gave me, is all."

"Oh?" Henry asked, brightening at the talk of books. "Haunted by the vengeful spirit of an albatross?"

"Something of that kind," Catherine said. Pretending a smile, she asked, "Tell me, what is the church's policy on casting out evil spirits?"

Henry laughed, relieved it seemed to find himself on the familiar ground of Catherine's imagination and his own profession. "Rather boring, I'm afraid, my dear. None of that Popish superstition about holy water and chanting that one finds in the best kind of fiction."

"But you know how?" Her voice was too intense for what she'd meant to be a light question.

They both paused, and then Henry replied in a more serious tone, "If a parishioner is oppressed by evil spirits, I would have to go to the bishop for advice, and then I might pray over the person to relieve their suffering. Speaking frankly, Catherine, I've never had cause to look into it. Setting novels aside, I do not believe that evil spirits have troubled anyone since the time of the Fathers of the Church."

Catherine considered this, and further considered asking what might be done if it was not a person but an object that was possessed, but she had to admit that she'd never heard of her father doing such a thing either. This was England after all, and the dawn of a new century at that. "It's just as well I'm not possessed then," she told him, setting down her cup and rising. "Perhaps it is just the new house. I am sure that I will settle in, soon."

Henry stood as well, and leaned across to kiss her cheek. "I hope so," he said. "You light up this house, and everything in it."

He then retreated before she could comment on that outpouring of romanticism, but it lifted her heart nonetheless. What would she do without Henry?

Catherine sighed and went into the drawing room to again stare at the pianoforte. She remembered how rapturous she'd been about this room when she'd first seen it, how even then she wished with all her heart that it would be hers. Now it was hers, and yet she was complaining of it being ruined, even if only to herself.

Still, the instrument really did not match the rest of the room. Catherine imagined burning it, but dismissed the idea. As a start, even Catherine and Jane and Robbie together likely couldn't move it outside. Although, if one had an axe...

No, the whole affair was all in her imagination. If she turned her mind to work of the household, as her mother always advised, she would sleep properly and have fewer cares. Dissection followed by defenestration would not be required.

To prove to herself that she had nothing to fear, Catherine sat at the keyboard, lifted the cover and picked out "Royal Oak." Nothing happened, save that she hit three wrong notes. Catherine closed the lid and went down to the kitchen to help make candles. She'd burned the next to last of the tallow ones in her late night wanderings.

* * *

"That's a pretty song, ma'am," Jane said as they filled the moulds.

Catherine realised she was humming, and stopped. "It's peculiar," she said, "I don't know what it is."

"Must have heard it somewhere, ma'am."

"Yes. Yes I must have," Catherine answered, and made herself think of something else.

* * *

That night, she threw herself into Henry's arms and kissed him. He froze, surprised by her fervour, but then responded with enthusiasm. They fell asleep in one another's arms some hours later.

In the depth of night, Catherine again woke to the sound of the pianoforte. This time, she made herself stay in bed, burying her head under the bolster to block the sound. How had she not woken Henry the night before? Had the music enchanted his sleep? Or was the sound of the keys in her mind alone. It did not diminish when she covered her ears; now she could hear the humming, too, more clearly than ever. It was a man's voice, and not quite in tune with the music, but niggling at it like a hangnail. For all that she was exhausted to the quick, Catherine couldn't think of sleep. Not with that music pounding through her like a regiment's tattoo.

Catherine flung aside the bolster and got up. She didn't trouble with a candle this time, but padded down to the drawing room by feel. The music grew louder as she approached, swelling until it overwhelmed her thoughts, and began to swirl colours before her eyes. She came to the keyboard blindly, the darkened room having filled itself with light.

She'd left her room with some notion of closing up the pianoforte or stuffing it with cushions, but standing in front of it, head filled with a thousand notes at once, she found herself beginning to play. Her fingers all seemed to know the exact movements of the piece, and her shoulders followed them, swaying with the rise and fall of the tempo in a way that she'd long been taught was immodest. She could not now help the passion that filled her body in the same way that the music filled her mind.

Though she was playing, she could hear the humming still, seeming to come from just behind her right shoulder, as if someone were standing over her, watching her play, close enough to guide her hands if she faltered.

Yet Catherine did not falter. She played blind in the dark and hit every note as perfectly as the one who'd written it. When the movement ended, she began it again, and then again. She thought vaguely of the stories of Italian peasants who danced and danced until they died of fatigue, and indeed she was already exhausted, but the notion did not alarm her. Everything save the music felt strange and far away, as though the body sitting at the bench was someone else's, and she was nothing but the impulse to play. The humming became clearer, closer, until Catherine almost felt his breath in her ear.

There were words in it, now, guiding her fingers, telling her to play lightly or swiftly or to strike a key this way or that, and again humming along as she did as he asked.

It struck her then that she did not want to please that voice.

She did not want it. She did not want him. He was too close.

Jerkily, Catherine tore her right hand from the keys and swiped at the lid prop. Her wrist struck it; pain shot up her arm; the lid came down with a bang.

In the silence that followed, Catherine sat in front of the keys, cradling her wrist and breathing hard.

"I will pour wallpaper paste on your keys," she told the pianoforte with feeling.

"Catherine?" That was Henry, standing at the base of the stairs in his nightshirt.

Catherine blinked hard against the sudden candlelight—one of the good beeswax candles—but she didn't know what to say.

"I heard you playing," Henry told her. His hair was mussed and his voice sounded unsure and with the drags of sleep clinging to it still. "That was not... you cannot possibly know how, but I heard you."

"It wasn't me,and yet it was; I couldn't stop," Catherine replied. She didn't have her head together enough to lie to him, and what was more she didn't want to. "I think the pianoforte is haunted. Possibly by the Baronet's daughter's music teacher." Who, she did not add, had likely earned his demise, at least if he'd been humming like that too the lady in question.

"Ah," was all Henry said. He blinked and came forward, lighting the still keys and with it, the red welt across the side of Catherine's wrist. "You're hurt!"

She shook her head. Her thoughts were clear as they'd ever been now, and she knew what she had to do. "It's nothing, Henry. I'm going to go mix some paste, or plaster, or possibly cement."

Henry looked from her face to her wrist to the pianoforte, and asked, "My love, have you considered burning it?"

Catherine felt a genuine smile tugging at her lips, the first in days. "As a matter of fact, I have."


End file.
